AUGUST 2026 SULLYGRAM:  Hello, torpid August. Ancient Romans thought your heat was brought on by the Dog Star Sirius rising and setting in tandem with the sun, hence dog days. But you are such a benchmark month in my life that I think the flurry of all the August birthdays, passings and anniversaries right out of the gate have something to do with it. In any case, it’s more like hangdog days this year coming out of July. Boundary waters and Canada aflame, smoke-thickened air like a scrim over sunsets, and I hope those shadows flitting across my yard are arcing eagles and not vultures looking for something dead. For sure there is deadness in the eyes of strangers I meet on the street (perhaps exhaustion from all the political pique this year). Almost makes me feel bad about feeling good when I head out for the pool or the parks or just to check in at my fav haunts. Too much clinical depression everywhere, and a kind act produces surprise or guardedness on the face of a recipient.

If, perchance, you are suffering such downer symptoms, give yourself a dose of love and perspective. Before you can love others, you have to love yourself, warts and all. No matter where you are in life, take pride in your accomplishments – those known to others and the ones known only to you. Let your train travel on down the tracks (or off the tracks). Stoke the boiler and yank the whistle. You are the engineer and you need not ride with baggage.

So, what station stops have you made so far? Were they scheduled, unscheduled, whistle stops, shunts onto sidings, derailings, train wrecks? Bet you’ve climbed some steep grades. To ride the train of life is pretty much to make a run at those three destinations that I’ve written about before. The grand trifecta – Love, Fame and Fortune – haunt our fantasies, but they also fine-tune our perspectives with every mile of clickety-clack.

For most people, Fame and Fortune remain hidden in veils of clouds like Shangri-La, but Love hides in plain sight. Readers have taught me that love of one kind or another is around every bend. You just have to recognize it. How could it be otherwise? So many beings are begging for it. The lost, the needy, the lonely, the wounded, the captive, the empty, the young, the old, the abandoned, the discarded, the hollow, the numb…even strays and pets. Is your name on that passenger list? All riders off at the next stop! You have reached your destination. But watch your step.

You have to give love first. Have to pay your fare on the Rock Island Line. Get your ticket punched. Then you become worthy of that other kind of love…the one I left out. That one may appear and disappear in the mist like Brigadoon. The Grand Central Station of romantic passion is as elusive as a fata morgana. Count yourself blessed if it appears for you, because the inamorata of your dreams resides there, the one who thinks a lot like you and makes your bedrock quake with carnal desire and consecrated adoration. I’ve written about that before, too, and how the magic found me twenty years ago. So, let me ask a question that I didn’t explore, but that the smartest people I know (especially women) wonder about themselves now and then.

Is all love self-love?

Women are always measuring love, as if it’s a thermostat in a drafty house, whereas men just want to set it and forget it. Beneath the semantics of self-love, methinks there are some serious distinctions to be made. Because, of course, everything we do is self-serving in the sense that the brain has to green-light any action, even if it goes against what we wish we could do. The heart may be willing but the brain makes the call. Maybe it’s a Hobson’s choice, maybe it’s a reflex, maybe it’s a calculation. We take the harder job because we need the money. We risk our lives to save someone because we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t. We love our old clothes but we give them away because they don’t fit us anymore (that’s a metaphor for rationales). When it comes to romantic love, isn’t the heart-brain negotiation the same? And is self-love the same as selfish love?

We all want to love someone valuable who thinks we’re valuable. That may be a form of trophy love, but what’s the trophy for? If it’s for passions deeper than sex, as imperishable as personality, and compatible with the intricacies of how two people think, then what out-siders see is irrelevant. To care, to desire to reward someone, to empathize…we have it in us to conform to a whole lexicon of corollaries. Love at first sight? Time will tell. Opposites attract? So they say, but personally, I’ve only seen that in marriages built on rigid roles and maintaining distances. How about true, predestined, written-in-the-stars, tandem growth love? Ding, ding, ding! Rare as hen’s teeth. Rare as teats on a boar. But in my OSHO, that’s still self-love…fortuitously or perhaps by divine guidance, because the premises in two brains must resonate with the imprints in two hearts. Four for four. Still, it happens. Wishing you that journey, dear readers.

So, roll on down the line, August. And drop me off at the pool every day or so. It’s good to be back in the water again. Trouble is I don’t have those beautiful vistas of Mom Nature out on the trails to share with you. No photo shoots of the Gold Cathedral and Bambi frolicking in clover. Will you settle for the inside of a locker room in a couple of pix instead? Puh. At least I’m not naked.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan